[SOLVED] icons for partitions I don't have -- blkid.tab?

chexmix · 10-03-2012, 07:27 PM

Hi Folks --

This is in the realm of "harmless I guess but why does it look this way?"

Since upgrading to 14.0 my xfce desktop has been littered with a bunch of icons for volumes I don't have, such as "2.1GB Volume." There are ten of them indicating volumes of various sizes. If I attempt to mount one of them I get a message like the following:

Code:

Error mounting /dev/sda9 at /run/media/chexmix/4fa8215d90f8a097: Command-line `mount -t "ufs" -o "uhelper=udisks2,nodev,nosuid" "/dev/sda9" "/run/media/chexmix/4fa8215d90f8a097"' exited with non-zero exit status 32: mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda9,
       missing codepage or helper program, or other error
       In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
       dmesg | tail  or so

I think I have grepped these down to the file /etc/blkid.tab. I have to the best of my knowledge never looked at nor been aware of this file before. It has lines like this:

Code:

<device DEVNO="0x0804" TIME="1348744684.420786" TYPE="ufs">/dev/sda4</device>
<device DEVNO="0x0805" TIME="1348744684.421164" TYPE="ufs">/dev/sda5</device>

man blkid shows me what blkid is supposed to do ... but where are these nonexistent volumes coming from? It doesn't seem like a good idea to hand-edit this file.

I did find this thread on LQ:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...oblems-696903/

but it seems it's a mystery there, too.

/GB

gnashley · 10-04-2012, 02:42 AM

blkid.tab is generated the first time blkid is run. If you subsequently run blkid it will use/show the entries already found in blkid.tab, unless you use the '-c /dev/null' option.

chexmix · 10-04-2012, 06:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gnashley

blkid.tab is generated the first time blkid is run. If you subsequently run blkid it will use/show the entries already found in blkid.tab, unless you use the '-c /dev/null' option.

Thanks, gnashley.

I'm still puzzled, though. I ran 'blkid -c /dev/null' and it spat the contents of blkid.tab to stdout. So I thought, "oh, maybe I'm supposed to move blkid.tab aside first." So I renamed it, reran 'blkid -c /dev/null'. It didn't spit out anything.

So I've logged out ... restarted the box ... the volumes are still there, littering my desktop. blkid.tab is still renamed to blkid.tab.OLD. I guess the things I don't understand are mainly two (and a little more):

1) what ran blkid and generated the .tab file in the first place? I had never heard of any of this before digging into this problem (that is, _I_ didn't run it).
2) where is it picking up this untrue information that I have all these little partition-slivers?
2.5) how can this still be happening when I've renamed bklid.tab?

I'm guessing it is peculiar to XFCE, whatever it is ... when I switch to a KDE desktop (which I don't like to do ... too heavy for my taste), the icons do not appear.

I'll keep poking around.

/Glenn

chexmix · 10-06-2012, 12:01 AM

OK. Now I know what is (was) going on.

Those partitions? Uh. They were the OpenBSD volumes I had on this dual-boot machine. I just moved my OpenBSD install elsewhere because of space considerations, and ... poof! Why didn't I recognize this? Because, I think, I am getting really, really old.

Marking as solved and hoping for forgiveness.

I am sorry for doubting you, blkid!